The chestnut trees along the drive formed a deep green tunnel all the way from the real world to the house. Summer had arrived here while I’d been away, just as Lucas had said it had. The last of the light filtered down between the huge leaves but along the verges the darkness was creeping, turning the undergrowth into a black inscrutable mass. As I turned the car off the road from the village I had had a sense of saying goodbye to normality, a last deep breath before the underwater plunge. In the rearview the drive closed in behind me. My stomach jumped with unease at the prospect of being at Stoneborough again. Whatever it was I felt at the house had no power over me in London; I didn’t want to submit myself to its hold again. I dreaded that sensation of being watched, the feeling that there was someone or something there that could see without being seen.
I wished Greg were with me. Although Lucas had said that he was welcome, he hadn’t felt comfortable with the idea, not the first time I went back. He also didn’t think I should have come up tonight. I had come straight from The Times where I was in the middle of my third weekend shift in a row. I had driven to the office so that I would be ready for a quick get-away from London when I finished. I was due back there at nine in the morning. I knew I was cutting it fine but it had been ten days since Lucas’s overdose and I’d told him I couldn’t come the previous weekend. The hurt in his voice when I’d told him I couldn’t make this one either had made me search for a way to make it possible. I had worked three weeks straight and hadn’t really caught up on the night’s sleep I’d missed when we were at the hospital. I’d struggled to stay awake on the motorway. It had been a warm day and the car was hot, although that wasn’t the sole reason that my hands had been clammy on the wheel.
It was past nine by the time I pulled up on the gravel circle. I switched off the engine and yawned. Outside the car the air smelled different. Instead of the tang of hot streets, here there was that warm sweet fragrance peculiar to an English evening in early summer, as if the land were gently exhaling. A bat swooped and dived in the navy sky over my head before darting away. I turned to look at the house’s closed face. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ I said aloud but somehow the dauntlessness I had meant to project died in the air and my voice was only a thin, cowed ribbon of sound. I had a sudden intimation of the vulnerability I had felt here before and marched up the path to ring the bell, keen to be in company.
It was the familiar Lucas who opened the door, not the angry, violent one of the night we split up or the beaten, broken-hearted version from the hospital. I felt a sudden urge to rush into his arms and hold him, to fix that incarnation of him and prevent the return of either of the others. I stepped forward and he touched me lightly on the shoulder. Neither of us said anything and he took my overnight bag and put it at the bottom of the stairs. He coughed. ‘Come through. Danny’s found some good stuff in the cellar. We were expecting you a little earlier so he’s opened it already. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘Of course not.’
‘I’m not drinking. I’m having a total break for a couple of weeks.’
‘That sounds like a good idea.’
In the kitchen Michael jumped up to greet me. It had been at least two months since I’d seen him, I realised. Danny stayed seated at the table. He didn’t say hello but, when he was sure no one else was looking, raised one ironic eyebrow. Lucas got out a glass for me from the cupboard but Martha shooed him into a chair.
My arrival had interrupted her telling a story about the refuge. She recapped the beginning for me and then continued. I was grateful for the opportunity to sit quietly for a few minutes. I wondered, though, whether anyone else noticed how often her eyes flicked to Danny to gauge the effect her jokes had. She was a good raconteur and I was pleased that he responded to her. I knew it was too much to hope that things would go well between them – the secrecy that he had pressed on her told me that – but I couldn’t bear for him to treat her with disdain. I wouldn’t be able to keep the silence she had begged me to if he was rude or dismissive of her. I was interested to note, however, that he was also acknowledging Michael’s existence again and Michael was responding. Maybe that particular wound was healing.
‘We’re just going to have an omelette, Jo, as it’s late,’ said Lucas, pouring another glass of orange juice. ‘I’ll start it now you’re here.’
‘No, you sit there, Lucas,’ said Michael, getting up. ‘I’ll do it.’
The kitchen with its high ceiling had always been cold by this time of night but now the air coming in through the French windows was warm. I was hot even in my light summer shirt. I stifled another yawn, wondering how late it would be before I could slip away to bed. Michael was cracking the eggs into a large earthenware bowl with painstaking precision and I longed to hurry him.
After we’d eaten, Martha stood up to go to the loo and Lucas moved into her place. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he said quietly.
‘You don’t have to thank me, idiot,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely to be here.’
‘I’ve got something to show you. I know you need to get some sleep but it won’t take long.’
My heart sank but I smiled. ‘Of course.’ I looked at my watch: it was gone eleven. ‘I just need to make a quick phone call,’ I said, ‘then I’ll be with you.’
His mouth tightened a little as he thought about who I would be calling at that time, then, with an effort, he smiled again. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’
The table lamps were the only source of light in the hall and the night had already claimed it for its own, its syrupy darkness swallowing the walls and the busts on their pillars, the moonlight from the dome only penetrating as far as the winding banisters above my head. I didn’t want to ring Greg from there with its invisible listening ears, real or imagined, and it didn’t seem right to call on the landline anyway, when Lucas would pay the bill.
There was no reception at all inside so I had to go out into the garden to use my mobile. I left the house by the side door and went carefully down the steps from the terrace to the lawn. The sky was not black but a rich purple and the moon was full, a perfect creamy disc so immediate I felt I could stand on tiptoe and touch it. The light it cast was peculiarly bright: I could see the garden distinctly. I walked round the foot of the house, not wanting to stray too far, a little afraid, despite myself, of what might lurk in the shadows further out. I walked round until I found a spot with a signal. Danny had told me in the past that it was better away from the house but standing alone in the middle of the vast expanse of lawn made me feel too exposed, as if, in a hideous battering of wings, something might swoop out of the air and take me.
I needed to hear Greg’s voice and to know that the real world was still going on without me. It was kicking-out time at the pubs and the streets in Shepherd’s Bush would be alive with people going either home or on elsewhere. I wished I was there, listening to the sound of it from my favourite spot on his sofa.
‘Jo?’ He picked up just as I thought the call would ring out. ‘How is it?’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘He’s making a real effort. No one’s mentioning the other day but they’re all dashing round, treating him with kid gloves.’
‘And how are you?’ he asked. ‘How was work today?’
‘Great. Rebecca called in, too, and she mentioned that the dates for the maternity cover are fixed now and that we should talk.’
‘That’s fantastic. Make sure you get there OK tomorrow. I think you took a bit of a risk going up there tonight – but you know that.’
I did; we’d spoken about it at length. ‘It was the only way I could keep Lucas happy,’ I said again now. ‘And as we discussed, it does mean I’m only away from you for one night …’
‘I miss you. I want you back here, in my bed.’ He growled, caveman-style. ‘And tell Lucas that if he as much as tries to touch you, I’ll take him apart.’
When I got back inside Lucas took me upstairs to Patrick’s study. I was so tired it was difficult to keep my eyes open. I could have wept when he turned on the cine projector. ‘Look,’ he said.
It is early evening and the sun is poised above the house like a new penny. Shadows are stretching across the paving stones and playing in the gently moving leaves of the wisteria. The far end of the terrace is still in sunlight and there, lolling on large cushions and stretched out on rugs and blankets, are Patrick’s friends. Bottles of red wine stand on the stones and on a wooden board there is a piece of liquefying cheese and the snub end of a baguette. Elizabeth is leaning back on a scarlet cushion displaying her body, naked apart from a pair of black knickers. Thomas Parrish has a possessive arm around her shoulders, its weight and thick black hair in marked contrast to her smooth brown skin. She is built on a different scale to him altogether: by comparison she looks like a precocious tempting child. He leans in so that his lips are against her ear and his nose is in the dark hair that falls around her shoulders. She laughs confidently, throwing her head back, and the silent noise causes Justin, Lucas’s father, to look up from where he is lying. He says something that makes them both laugh again before turning back to Claire, the camera following him.
He and Claire are sharing a large striped rug. Like Elizabeth, Claire is wearing only the bottom half of a bikini, hers a swirl of yellow and green with ties at the side. Her shyness in front of the lens is evident again: she sits with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped tightly around them. Her breasts are hidden and on her shoulders are the pale marks of a bikini top worn on an earlier day. Justin lies on his side behind her wearing shorts made of cut-off jeans. He is improbably brown and his chest is flat and muscled. He looks piratical as he runs his finger inside the elastic of her bikini bottoms, tracing the skin around her hip and the small of her back. The camera watches as Parrish passes him a joint and Justin takes a toke, causing its end to flare orange. He pulls himself up and leans round in front of Claire, who resists at first, gently smiling, but then lets him exhale the contents of his lungs into her mouth. Keeping her eyes on his, she holds it for three or four seconds and then breathes out the heavy smoke into the fading light.
On the balustrade, apart from the group, is Patrick. He is fully dressed except for shoes and looks out from the terrace over the lawn to the trees at the bottom; it is a moment or two before he turns to face the camera. He smiles at the cameraman and speaks briefly, before pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, lighting one and then turning back to his view of the garden.
‘Your parents look happy together,’ I said, biting back a yawn.
‘Yes,’ said Lucas, and his voice had a smile in it. ‘They do, don’t they? But that’s why I wanted you to see it. They’re there, all three of them, even though my mother is with my father now. They’re still friends.’
Despite my exhaustion, I hardly slept. The heat had risen through the house and my room on the top floor felt like a kiln. I tried leaving the curtains open to encourage in what little breeze there was but the exceptional brightness of the moon made the room too light. And as well as that – and despite my best attempts to be rational – I was afraid. I could feel the house’s atmosphere, that eerie swirling in the dark places in the corners of the room and the folds of the curtains and behind the furniture. It wasn’t explicit; there was no sudden breathless rush, as if the air had been sucked out to make a vacuum that dragged the walls in on me, but there was a feeling of underlying menace, a flexing of muscle. I kept my eyes pressed tightly shut all night, childishly afraid of what might be standing at the end of the bed if I were to open them.
At about three o’clock I began to panic about how little sleep I was going to get. Despite having come so close to losing Lucas and thus being especially careful of him, I admitted to myself that I resented him now. If I hadn’t had to come up to the house, I wouldn’t have been in this situation, I thought, as I turned over again and tried to find a cool patch on the pillow with my cheek. I was going to be shattered for the whole of the next day and I needed to be on top form. If I could do the maternity cover, then I would be able to leave the Gazette and, even if there wasn’t a permanent job after the six months, I would have real national newspaper experience on my CV.
I woke to find that I had slept through my alarm. The room was as bright as though it were midday. It was a quarter to eight and I was due at my desk in Wapping at nine. There was no way I could get there by then. There was no time to shower or do my hair. I grabbed the outfit I had laid out the night before and roughly cleaned my teeth. I was at the front door within ten minutes.
Lucas was waiting for me in the hall.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, rushing past him, scrabbling in my bag for my car key. ‘I can’t stop and talk. I’ll call you tonight, OK?’
He followed me out on to the drive, picking his way across the gravel in bare feet. He indicated that I should wind down my window. ‘Will you come again?’ he asked, kneeling down.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course.’
He smiled. ‘And bring Greg next time, if he will. I’ll get used to it.’
I was an hour late and when I got to the desk I used, there was a Post-it note stuck to the screen of the computer: ‘Rebecca rang. She was expecting you in at nine. Please call her at home immediately.’